On the Subject of Cloaking

[shockwave536]

There was a similar thread posted back in April, and I understand that it's usually frowned upon to repeat/revive threads. However, I feel like this is an issue worth bringing up again:
Cloaking costs too much energy.
This is a game that focuses on both creativity and functionality. So, naturally, it frustrated me to find out that I can't build a small, fairly nice-looking ship that can cloak for long periods of time (if not indefinitely). When I finished my Scout Disc, it did it's job, but it also ended up looking fugly because of how the power/cloaking systems work:

The power system, I think, is fine just the way it is; it forces you to think about how you design your energy production and storage systems without being uber complicated. However, all the thinking in the world couldn't help me to design a better way to cloak my ship while keeping a look that matched the rest of the Kauriid Armada.
Now, I understand why the cloak costs so much. It's supposed to balance the game so that huge ships can't perma-cloak. On the other hand, maybe it costs too much; 1000 power per mass per second? That's absolutely ridiculous. It prevents the creation of smaller ships that not only function well, but look decent. Well, I suppose you could make a nice looking cloaker, but the only one that I've seen so far is huge; hardly a scout vessel or stealth fighter.
I'm not suggesting a massive change in the overall energy mechanic, but perhaps cutting the cloaker's energy use in half would be useful enough without becoming unbalanced. Think about it: in order to use both a cloaker and a jammer, the total energy cost would be 1000. If the cloaker using that much energy by itself is too difficult to implement in a nice-looking ship, then it may discourage players from using both (at least in larger ships).
That may be a little too much to ask for, but you could also consider at least a slight reduction in energy consumption for both modules. There was another interesting suggestion by Viridis00 in the other thread that I mentioned (7th player from the top), which I think is worth a read. Whatever you do, though, please make cloaking a function worth implementing.

 

[Lecic]

You need both cloaking and jamming on a stealth ship, or it's useless, anyway. So it's 1500/e/s/mass.

The stats were going to be changed to 50/e/s/mass and 1450e/s/mass for jamming and cloaking respectively, but I'm not sure if they still are. This was a placeholder until it is changed so that ship combat was no longer core based.

I think it would make sense for cloaking to be changed so that hull costs no or little (1/e/s/mass of hull) so people can still build nice looking cloakers that aren't huge.

 

[1adog1]

I understand where you're coming from, I used to have a lot of trouble while trying to create cloaked ships. I have a simple little tutorial on how to set one up here. It IS possible to create small cloaked ships (Less than 100 Mass), but if you want good aesthetics as well, you're going to need to make bigger ships with longer lines of power generators. I do agree with with Lecic though, I don't think hulls should require as much energy as other parts to cloak. BUT, I also think we could have it so that ONLY blocks that are on the outer part of the ship need to be cloaked, since that's how it would most likely work in real life application.

On a side note, I could see that ship looking a lot better in the Realistic texture pack that comes with the game, it might be worth a look.

-Cheers! :D

 

[Cool3303]

Well I don't think you got the right scaling at mind.
For me:
smaller than 120 (all sidelenghts added):medium
smalller than 250:big

Of course there are different categories like the form and the general stilistic aproach,but those mostly don't matter right now.
My stealth ships are Borg(cube) shaped and often have 41as sidelenghts(123,rather medium).I go for 500K energy at cost of 100~150mass

Since I like the bigger scale this is very limiting to me:
The problem is that the energy cap is so low (1million),building medium sized cloaking ships with much more than 500K is pointless since the power efficiency goes down rapidly.
So no matter what,if you are building in a dimension box of less than 150 you are capped at pretty much 300mass (with more or less 100mass energy blocks)
The funny thing about that this mechanic alone is justifying an reduction of the energy cost if the cost was halfed (750) building up to 1 mill generation would be efficient and you still could only build 1.500mass -150~250 for Energy and ~50mass for engines.
This wouldn't make sense for an battleship or capital,it would basically allow an big ship,with rather weak weapons and without armor

TLDR:No scaling with scaling up the fun with scaling down the cost
Like Lecic mentioned one way would be to remove hulls from the cost.
The other approach would be to rework the way the energy is reduced.
Calculating the surface isn't possible for various reasons,I don't think schema would do that (I think I remember this suggestion ... not too sure though)
For example you could use an approach to set the energy related to the size of the ship but that would kick bigger stealth ships out,though ...for example making non-perma stealth more attractive.

I don't know how much thought I want to put into this though =P

PS:Your stealth ship actually isn't that good,when you pm me with a description of what you want I can certainly build you a small craft

 

[mrsinister]

In my case, I made a small - medium sized fighter / gunship, and had plenty of power and tanks etc. but when I cloaked I would only be cloaked for a few seconds...hmm.. I think maybe like 6 - 12 seconds. With the new system I just went into the block behavior and changed the power consumption per block to 10. That made me able to cloak indefinitely if it was the only system active. If I turned on my ion field, power started to drain. Then I changed the power consumption to 20 and I think I found a decent balance so far... lol I couldnt stay cloaked indefinitely anymore and it was quite a good amount of time till my power ran out. So, all in all ,if you have your own server this is easy enough to mess with till you find an optimum behavior. If you do not have your own server, then yes, I think power consumption per block needs to be lessened for those that want a stealth ship able to stay cloaked for either an indefinite time period or a set time period, instead of a few seconds.

 

[Cool3303]

Cloaking to 20? You are insane...
You still couldn't create insane big permacloak stealthers but power storage (now 1000 per block^1.05)
So basically evey capital could cloak... for enough time.
Do you even know how how to build lol?

 

[mrsinister]

Cloaking to 20? You are insane...
You still couldn't create insane big permacloak stealthers but power storage (now 1000 per block^1.05)
So basically evey capital could cloak... for enough time.
Do you even know how how to build lol?

yup I know how to build, and since its my own server ,what's it matter? I offered some form of help /or stuff to try. And am I insane...sure thing. Have you made a bird of prey? you are aware they can remain cloaked yes? And no I am not a Star Trekie or whatever, but it was the first thing that came to mind. Soooo, if i want to have it that way on my server I can and I am still testing a good rate.

 

[Cool3303]

Well yes,but if you can't build one with more than 20e per block... well honestly,that means you suck at building.
I challenge you to send me the design and I bet I can make it much better,depending on the amount of hull even permacloak

 

[Star Commander Shepard]

Lecic I like the idea, but then people would make cloaked ships with superthick hulls. Maybe somehow it could be balanced, like, have a high power requirement for thrusters and power systems.

 

[HerrColonel]

Hello
I know this is not the perfect solution, but I don't think the devs are gone to refit this before some time.
Look at this:

This is ofc blockbehaviorconfig.xml in Starmade/data/config/

Build a nice fighter with lots of power generators then tweak the cloaking value down until your fighter can cloak for ever. (So you still need to build a ship as efficient as your fighter to cloak for ever)
Tab + . is the shortcut to reload your config file while in game (if you're the server admin) (some values needs to "refresh" before work in game, in the case you set a lower shield value (for example) and load it via Tab+. you need to delete and add one block of shield. I don't know how jammers and cloakers behave)

 

[Lecic]

Lecic I like the idea, but then people would make cloaked ships with superthick hulls. Maybe somehow it could be balanced, like, have a high power requirement for thrusters and power systems.

Well, to support those super thick hulls they'd need a bunch of new thrusters to keep it moving, which would drain more power, so it would be harder to keep them active.

 

[Star Commander Shepard]

Lecic -as I said

 

[mrsinister]

Well yes,but if you can't build one with more than 20e per block... well honestly,that means you suck at building.
I challenge you to send me the design and I bet I can make it much better,depending on the amount of hull even permacloak

ok... ,

have at it.

Total Blocks = 452
Length = 22 ,Width = 19 ,Height = 7
Mass = 45.2
Thrust = 66.5
Power = 50000 (2456.6 /sec)
Shield = 9,900 (110/sec)
weapons = AMC 95 damage x2
reload = 474
distance = 403

All Hulls use Hardened Hull

so by rights, 145 * 452 blocks I would need to generate what 65K+ power per sec to remain cloaked...lol good luck with that. Even at 20 per block its over ,lol ,9000 per sec.

edit: update of correct stats

 

[mrsinister]

Hello
I know this is not the perfect solution, but I don't think the devs are gone to refit this before some time.
Look at this:
View attachment 2020
This is ofc blockbehaviorconfig.xml in Starmade/data/config/

Build a nice fighter with lots of power generators then tweak the cloaking value down until your fighter can cloak for ever. (So you still need to build a ship as efficient as your fighter to cloak for ever)
Tab + . is the shortcut to reload your config file while in game (if you're the server admin) (some values needs to "refresh" before work in game, in the case you set a lower shield value (for example) and load it via Tab+. you need to delete and add one block of shield. I don't know how jammers and cloakers behave)

and this is what I was getting at. does that mean I suck at building? lol freaking some people... there always has to be one that thinks he knows it all or is better than all.... *looks towards Cool3303*

 

[Lecic]

Lecic -as I said

The way you said it made it seem to be an stat change based on whether it was a stealth ship or not, and not something that would already happen in game if someone tried to make a stealth ship with thicker layers of hull, provided my suggested change was made.

 

[Ithirahad]

Yeah; hull shouldn't take nearly as much power to cloak. I'm thinking around 5 e/s/m, and maybe 2 ~e/s/m for jamming? Perhaps cloaking/jamming Hardened Hull could be a bit more - maybe 50-75 e/s/m cloaking and 20 e/s/m for jamming.

 

[LordChicken]

Personally I think the solution for stealth should be shifted away from the energy cost, and more into counter play. As it stands stealth is totally one sided, you get the energy to stealth, you go invisible and run around. Nothing anyone can really do to stop you.

If you installed a radar or detection system that had to be turned on(a great place to put one would be a space station) that allowed same faction units to see the stealth ship, hiding large ships would be a bit less of an issue. Note however, that the detection system would need to be balanced(auto detection is rarely fun), personally I would make it have a harder time finding smaller ships(allowing smaller craft to get closer before being seen), while making finding invisible giants easy as pie.

[off the top of my head, have 1 detection block take X seconds to see a ship 10,000 mass or smaller(over that is auto vision when in range, number could be changed in servers), more detection blocks, can see faster, the smaller the ship the more time it takes to detect, meaning seeing small scout ships would be harder. Would also try and make distance a factor so small ships can't run up to point blank range before being seen.] Note: This is just off the top of my head, don't trust the math, and leave lots of wriggle room.​

If you shift half the stealth problem onto the defender from the attacker, I personally believe we could lower the energy costs. It would also be a less of an abusive relationship, which I think is what the dev's are afraid of. If stealth ever got strong it would be the only way to go.

Just my opinion take it with a grain of salt.

 

[shockwave536]

Personally I think the solution for stealth should be shifted away from the energy cost, and more into counter play. As it stands stealth is totally one sided, you get the energy to stealth, you go invisible and run around. Nothing anyone can really do to stop you.......If you shift half the stealth problem onto the defender from the attacker, I personally believe we could lower the energy costs. It would also be a less of an abusive relationship, which I think is what the dev's are afraid of. If stealth ever got strong it would be the only way to go.

I think this is a great idea, LordChicken. You've one-upped me in terms of solutions. Putting part of the stealth balance in the defender's hands makes perfect sense, and I think that it would indeed allow for lower energy consumption. The devs should write that idea down.

 

[mrsinister]

Personally I think the solution for stealth should be shifted away from the energy cost, and more into counter play. As it stands stealth is totally one sided, you get the energy to stealth, you go invisible and run around. Nothing anyone can really do to stop you.

If you installed a radar or detection system that had to be turned on(a great place to put one would be a space station) that allowed same faction units to see the stealth ship, hiding large ships would be a bit less of an issue. Note however, that the detection system would need to be balanced(auto detection is rarely fun), personally I would make it have a harder time finding smaller ships(allowing smaller craft to get closer before being seen), while making finding invisible giants easy as pie.

[off the top of my head, have 1 detection block take X seconds to see a ship 10,000 mass or smaller(over that is auto vision when in range, number could be changed in servers), more detection blocks, can see faster, the smaller the ship the more time it takes to detect, meaning seeing small scout ships would be harder. Would also try and make distance a factor so small ships can't run up to point blank range before being seen.] Note: This is just off the top of my head, don't trust the math, and leave lots of wriggle room.​

If you shift half the stealth problem onto the defender from the attacker, I personally believe we could lower the energy costs. It would also be a less of an abusive relationship, which I think is what the dev's are afraid of. If stealth ever got strong it would be the only way to go.

this is a great idea, you could also add a limiter on mass or amount of blocks used so titans, capital, and other giant size ships could not cloak, that way only certain "classes" of ships could cloak....idk just putting that out there, cause you know "some people" don't like titans , capitals or anything big cloaking.

 

[LordChicken]

Thank you for the complements.

I might post a more in depth version of the idea later. Remember that energy is not the only resource a ship has(and remember, we are still in early alpha. They can add more pretty easy.), making people think when they build both large ships and specialist ships is a good idea, most everyone likes the idea of a special craft built to be a master at a specific role.

Stealth is a wonderful feature, and with some TLC, it can become a part of the game, rather then just being tacked on.